Murder Keeps A Secret Page 18

  “Hmn,” Frost said. “What you say makes sense. If the murderer knew his true condition, there was no need to hurry the process along.”

  “Reuben, I’m desperate,” Bautista said. “All the newspapers have got the jitters about Rowan—and now this. Did you see that front-page column in the Press tonight by your old columnist friend, Arthur Mattison? How the cops can find the killer of a drug dealer in four hours, but not the murderer of a major author?

  “Nobody understands anything, or gives us credit for anything!” Bautista shouted. He jumped up as he spoke and started pacing the room. Frost had never seen him so agitated.

  “That drug dealer—you read about it yesterday—his murder was a grounder. Murder weapon with fingerprints in a trash can ten feet from the body. And three separate people all dropped a dime on the killer about ten minutes after the hit. Of course, we collared the guy. What do they think, we’re stupid? But now, since we can’t finger anybody who pushed your history professor, we’re a bunch of jerks!”

  “Luis, can I interrupt?” Cynthia asked. “What about the physical evidence you’ve got—the blood sample and the skin sample? I don’t mean to interfere, but can’t you take tests? Maybe you can’t find the killer that way, but you ought to be able to eliminate some of the people on your list.”

  “Oh, Cynthia, I agree with you,” Bautista replied. “Will you tell that to Joe Munson?”

  “Who’s he?” Reuben asked.

  “The goddam assistant district attorney in charge of the case—you saw him the other night, Reuben, at least on tape. Can’t see through his thick glasses beyond the end of his fat face. I tell him about twice a day that all we need is a bunch of court orders and we’d have this thing wrapped up—and Mattison and his press friends back in their cages.”

  “Well? Why isn’t that a good idea?” Cynthia asked.

  “Because he’s scared out of his pasty, pimple-covered skin, that’s why. ‘Probable cause’ is all he can say. ‘Got to have probable cause, Luis. Can’t have the police running around taking blood samples for no good reason.’

  “He’s right, of course, you do need probable cause to order a blood test or a skin test. The American way. I think we’ve got probable cause—characters out there with no known alibi and about three motives apiece. Fortes, the muscleboy, known to be in town the day Rowan was killed. That hood Giardi, who probably last gave blood when he took the goddam Mafia oath. The wife-beating professor, Jewett, also in the Big Apple on the big day. Knowles, your bankrupt publisher friend. I keep begging Munson to let me go after them!”

  “What does he say?” Reuben asked.

  “Like I told you, he’s scared, afraid to move. Hell, in a way I don’t blame him. Fortes isn’t even in the jurisdiction, and he’s hiding under the skirts of a broad you tell me’s one of the most powerful women in Washington. Not much sex appeal for Munson to go after that one. Then Jewett, also miles out of state and the best-known professor at the college he teaches at. Or Knowles, big-deal publisher of Nobel Prize winners. Munson would as soon get a court order against Mother Teresa as go against him. And Giardi—man, I agree with Munson, I don’t even want to think about that. He’d have fifty lawyers running to the Supreme Court if we tried to touch him. And last, but not least, you tell me you’ve got doubts about the man who probably will be the next President of the United States. Munson doesn’t even know about him, but his pimples would be popping if I even mentioned him!

  “I can see it now, amigos. Big photo opportunity for Presidential candidate. Having his blood drawn on television while big, macho Puerto Rican second-class detective looks on. Good for the junkie vote, maybe? Get him the sympathy of the Civil Liberties Union? Make him the hero of the Hispanics, for co-operating with Lajaras—me, the Hispanic cop? Christ, Reuben, do you see my problem?”

  “I do,” Reuben answered. “It’s prickly business. You think it would help if I talked to Munson’s boss?”

  “Negative. In a case like this, you can bet the DA knows everything Munson says or does. If I keep at it, maybe I can get an order to get tests from Giardi. He hasn’t won any big popularity contests down on Frank Hogan Place. But that would be all.

  “Take me back to street crime where you can finger somebody who isn’t famous or well-connected,” Bautista went on. “We’re never going to solve this thing, Reuben.”

  “Luis, we’ve got to stay calm,” Reuben said. “We’ve just got to plug away. Unless something more turns up on Professor Jewett, my hunch right now is that the most promising opening we’ve got is my meeting with Dine Carroll. I’m convinced those missing files of Ainslee’s are important and if we’re very, very lucky, something in Carroll’s files may shed some light that will guide us.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry to be so down. Hell, maybe the Crime Scene Unit will find some big, fat clue in Jenkins’s room at the hospital. Or, you’re right, maybe this guy Carroll can help. When do you see him, Friday?”

  “I’m afraid so. If I had my way, I’d see him tonight. But he’s an old man and Friday was the best I could do.”

  “What about Jewett? Don’t you want to find out where he is tonight?” Cynthia asked.

  Both men looked startled.

  “Jesus, Cynthia, you’re right. I’ll call Amherst right now.”

  “We’re seeing you tomorrow aren’t we?” Cynthia asked, when the detective returned from the library. “You and Francisca are coming to dinner?”

  “You bet.”

  “It’s a Bautista festival,” Cynthia said. “You tonight, you and Francisca tomorrow night, and Francisca for lunch tomorrow.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that,” Bautista said. “What’s that about?”

  “Just two girls talking. Nothing special—I don’t think. Unless we get some ideas.”

  “Yeah,” Bautista muttered.

  “And if we do, Luis, you’ll be the first to know,” Cynthia said as she said good-bye to the detective.

  22

  Women’s Work

  When Bautista and Francisca arrived for dinner the next night, the detective reported that Peter Jewett could not be found. He was not at his apartment and his car was gone.

  “Does this mean they put out an alarm on him?” Frost asked.

  “Yes, they have. But no results yet. This case is a shitcan,” Bautista said as he slouched into the sofa in the Frost living room.

  “Luis, you shouldn’t use such language,” Francisca admonished. “You’re with nice people now.”

  “I know, I know. But that’s what we call a hopeless case, one that will never be solved.”

  “Buck up, my friend,” Reuben said. “We’re not at the end of our rope yet. And even you seem more cheerful tonight.”

  “I’m sorry about last night. I was in bad shape, practically an EDP.”

  “EDP?” Cynthia queried.

  “Emotionally Disturbed Person. Not tonight, though. I’m too sleepy to have any emotions.”

  “Were you at the hospital all night?” Reuben asked.

  “Just about.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Not much. Some fabric hairs on the pillow that was used to kill Jenkins.”

  “That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It means we only have to look for a person who wears a suit, or at least a jacket. It narrows things down a lot. Poor Jenkins didn’t fight back the way Rowan did. So there’s no blood sample or skin scraping this time.”

  Frost was determined to avert still another run-through of the suspects, which he now saw coming. Turning to Francisca, sitting beside him on the sofa, he tried to change the subject. “How was your lunch today?” he asked.

  “You mean the pastrami sandwich in Cynthia’s office?”

  Reuben was confused. Such austerity was not like his wife, who enjoyed going out for lunch.

  “Are you on an economy drive, dear?” he asked her.

  “No, it’s just that Francisca and I had some business to do,” she replied
.

  “Business? Good Lord, you’re not interfering in this case, are you?”

  “I have to go to the kitchen,” Cynthia declared, leaving the room without answering her husband’s question.

  “Cynthia, what have you been up to?” Reuben called after her. “I demand to know.”

  Francisca started laughing, and Cynthia returned and addressed the men. “We’ll tell you what we’ve been up to on two conditions—that we wait until after dinner and that we stop talking about these ghastly murders until then. Agreed?” Without waiting for an answer, she returned to the kitchen.

  “I guess we’ve got our orders,” Reuben said, turning to Francisca. “You sure you won’t give us a preview of coming attractions?”

  “Never. You heard the lady.” Francisca laughed and patted Reuben’s forearm with one hand and swept back her long, lustrous black hair with the other.

  “What are we supposed to talk about then?” Frost asked. “Your lipstick?”

  “You like it?”

  “Well, it’s different. But yes, I do.” Francisca was wearing fiery red lipstick, a dramatic complement to her black hair and dark features. Bautista stared into his Scotch as this innocent flirtation went on.

  “If we’ve got to change the subject, I’ve got a question for you, Francisca,” Frost said. “What have things been like at Dickey and Company since Black Monday?”

  “You mean, since the stock market crashed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not so great. You know my boss, Mr. Selby, right?”

  Frost nodded.

  “He’s now the chairman, and personally in charge of getting rid of five hundred people. I’m spending lots of my time typing up lists of those who are getting fired. It’s very unhappy. Mr. Selby meets with the department heads in his office every morning. The door is shut, but I hear lots of shouting, and then the guys come out looking really mad. I just hope I keep my job.”

  “If your Mr. Selby has any sense you will,” Reuben said.

  “It’s not good, Reuben,” Francisca said. “The company lost a lot of money last year and the bosses are really fighting.”

  “I realize how lucky I was at Chase & Ward, Francisca. We always managed to make more money each year than we did the one before. Not a lot sometimes, but even if you’re growing just a little it keeps down the bitching and the backbiting.”

  “Yeah, money’s great, all right,” Bautista said. “Would it surprise you to know that it even helps cut down on crime? Give the guys in a street crew some money and maybe—maybe—they’ll stop mugging people.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Reuben said. “These murders we’ve got now, there’s only one suspect who might have killed for money. Stanley Knowles. Isn’t that odd, Luis?”

  “Not really. Robbery and mugging, that stuff’s for money. To buy drugs, or radios or fancy clothes. But murder? Anger and jealousy are what you usually find. And we’ve sure got them in our case.”

  “We’re not supposed to be talking about it,” Francisca said.

  “That’s all right. Cynthia can’t hear,” Reuben assured her.

  “Besides, I don’t think Knowles did it,” Francisca said.

  “What do you know about it, Francisca?” Bautista asked. Both men looked at her intently as she shrugged her shoulders.

  “Just a hunch,” she said, not convincingly. “Here she comes, so we can’t talk about it now.”

  Cynthia marshaled the group to the dining room table, where they all steered clear of the subject on everyone’s mind. Instead, they talked about Bautista’s plans after completing night law school at the end of the summer.

  “What are your plans?” Cynthia asked the detective straight out. By including Francisca in her sweeping gaze as she asked the question, she could be (as in fact she was) asking about the marital, as well as the vocational, future.

  “I wish I knew,” Bautista said. “I’ve got a résumé now—Francisca typed it for me last week. I guess I’ll circulate it around to some of the firms that do criminal defense work. Not the single-office guys down on Centre Street, but the bigger firms with good reputations. Of course, now that Reuben’s a criminal lawyer, maybe we could start a new department at Chase & Ward.”

  “Please, Luis, don’t remind me of that,” Reuben said. “That poor boy Alan would probably have ended up in Attica for life if I’d kept on with his case.” (Frost did, however, fantasize for a brief moment a meeting with George Bannard, the stolid Executive Partner of Chase & Ward. In the fantasy he proposed to Bannard that the firm start a criminal department, with Reuben returning from retirement and Luis Bautista assisting him. The meeting would either be a triumph for Bannard, proving once and for all that Frost was senile, or for Frost, with Bannard physically collapsing after hearing Frost’s outrageous idea.)

  “Or I could stay in the NYPD. The place isn’t paradise for a Puerto Rican yet, but it’s not just the old Irish gang, either. With a law degree, I might be able to get to Headquarters pretty quick.”

  “What do you think, Francisca?” Cynthia asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s true, Luis is a suit and could get downtown, I know it.”

  Bautista looked mildly disapproving at Francisca’s characterization.

  “A suit? What’s a suit?” Reuben asked.

  “A guy with a college education,” Francisca explained. “A guy who wears a suit, not a uniform.”

  “Cut it out, Francisca,” Bautista said. “You’ve got it wrong. A ‘suit’ is a guy who can read and write, and they’re a dime a dozen in the Department.”

  “That’s not what you told me a ‘suit’ was three months ago,” Francisca said, holding her ground.

  “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about staying on. With Francisca’s salary—if Selby doesn’t give her the ax—and mine, we could do all right.”

  Cynthia shot a glance at her husband. It sounded like matrimony to her. He did not comment, but began clearing the dishes.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Cynthia whispered to him in the kitchen as she began preparing dessert. “You haven’t cleared the table in years!”

  “I want to get this damned dinner over so we can find out what in the name of God you and Francisca have been up to!” he hissed.

  “Curosity killed the cat. But since you’re up, put out these plates.”

  Frost did as he was told and sat down to eat one of the Bonté raspberry tarts that Cynthia served.

  “Shall we have coffee here or in the living room?” she asked when dessert was finished.

  “In the living room,” Frost snapped, sure that his wife would have to concede that dinner was over once they moved from the table.

  “All right, girls, what’s up?” Reuben demanded, seated back in the living room.

  “Shall we tell them, Cynthia?” Francisca asked playfully. After the healthy quantity of Gruaud-Larose consumed at dinner, she looked to Reuben even more beautiful than usual.

  “Yes,” Cynthia answered. “We’re not trying to play games. It’s just that both of you have been so wrought-up about Rowan’s murder—and the appalling sequel yesterday—that I wanted you to have a solid meal where we talked about other things.”

  Cynthia took a sip from her demitasse cup, and continued. “I’m afraid, Luis, we’ve been dipping into what you so elegantly called the shitcan. Francisca and I were supposed to have a fancy lunch at Aurora today. Then last night I got to thinking about your frustration with Munson and the barrier of ‘probable cause’ between your blood tests and the suspects. I changed things around, and Francisca and I had a sandwich in my office. Francisca also took the afternoon off so we could carry out a little plan we worked out over lunch.”

  “What did you do, Cynthia?” Reuben demanded. “What besides eating pastrami sandwiches in your office? Please get on with it!”

  “Reuben, please calm down. And don’t interrupt. When I thought about it, it seemed to me that Luis and Mr. Munson of course had to be cautious. The police have t
o have rules in an ‘ordered society’—isn’t that what you call it, Reuben?”

  Her husband nodded reluctantly, still impatient to get to the heart of Cynthia’s maneuvers.

  “What I wondered was, do these same rules apply to two nosy women not connected with the police force? Rightly or wrongly, I decided that they didn’t. Then I thought about that report about privacy the Brigham Foundation—not my part, but the political affairs staff—put out last year. Do you remember it, Reuben?”

  “Yes, I remember it very well,” Frost said, monumentally impatient. “Not very original. It came to the not very startling conclusion that personal privacy was more difficult in the age of the computer.”

  “Oh, my dear, it said more than that. It said that people were getting used to having their privacy invaded, that they were resigned to it, so that they had given up trying to protect personal information.”

  “Such as their blood type?” Reuben said, catching on at last to Cynthia’s plot.

  “Yes, blood types. Blood types of the suspects. Not skin samples—we didn’t go out and attack Tommy Giardi with a knife. We did, however, make some very clever phone calls.”

  “Smooth phone calls,” Francisca added, pleased with herself.

  “I made the first one,” Cynthia said. “To Amherst, where I reached someone in the personnel department. I explained that I was from the Brigham Foundation—I told no lies—and that we needed certain information to complete our records on our trustee, Peter Jewett. I asked for his birthdate and social security number, and a few other dumb things, including his blood type. The woman who took the call was very cooperative, but was stumped at the blood type. She helpfully said she’d call the college health service to see if they knew and would call me back. Twenty minutes later she did, and Peter Jewett is type B.”

  “Which means he could have killed Rowan,” Bautista said.

  “Precisely. The next call, to Ralston Fortes, was more tricky. Francisca had the answer for that one.”

  “Shall I tell?” she asked, unable to conceal the triumphant look on her face. “It was easy if you thought about it. Luis had told me that Fortes was a bodybuilder. Now, I ride the subway every day, and half the Puerto Rican machos I see are reading bodybuilding magazines. So why not call Señor Fortes and interview him for one of those magazines?